Republican legislators in Arizona want to bring back death by firing squad as an option for those sentenced to the death penalty, and as a requirement for people convicted of killing a law enforcement officer, reported the Arizona Mirror.
A similar
proposal, sponsored by Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, failed in the
Arizona House of Representatives last year, but Sen. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria,
revived the idea this year.
Payne’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 1049 would ask voters in
November to amend the Arizona Constitution to allow death row inmates to choose
to be executed by lethal injection, the gas chamber or firing squad. If the
person was sentenced to death for murdering a law enforcement officer, the
firing squad would be the only execution option.
Senate Bill 1751, also sponsored by Payne, would put the
same rules about firing squad executions into state statute, but would only be
triggered if voters favor SCR1049.
Firing
squads would be made up of at least three volunteer shooters, and one of those
shooters would be given a blank round.
Last year,
Kolodin said his firing squad proposal was inspired by an independent review of
Arizona’s death penalty, commissioned by Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Hobbs
spiked the draft report from that review, written by retired
federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan, which detailed the numerous problems
the state has encountered when trying to procure the drug used for lethal
injections. Many pharmacies refuse to provide drugs for lethal injections, to
avoid harassment and controversy.
Multiple
judges and advocates, including Duncan, have spoken about the use of firing
squads and recommended them as a way to continue executions in a more humane manner. Duncan concluded that, although lethal
injection appears to be painless and humane, the reality is that it is
“fundamentally unreliable, unworkable and unacceptably prone to errors.”
Kolodin
also cited retired federal judge Alex Kozinski, who in 2014 wrote in the Wall
Street Journal that the firing squad should be reinstated because it was
“foolproof,” unlike lethal injection.
That isn’t
true, however. In 2025, South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad. An
autopsy revealed only two of the three shooters — all were firing live rounds —
hit Mahdi, and none hit him in the heart, as is supposed to happen.
Instead, he was shot in the liver and other internal organs. Pathologists said
that allowed his heart to remain beating and for him to remain conscious, and
in pain, as he bled to death.
“Mr. Mahdi
did experience excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60
seconds after he was shot,” one pathologist wrote in a report filed with the
South Carolina Supreme Court.
Arizona
has its own history
of botched executions by lethal injection, including one in 2014 that
was so bad the state didn’t conduct executions for eight years after
that.
Other
states have also looked at bringing back the firing squad as a method of
execution, and Idaho last year made it the state’s default form of execution. Recently, an inmate in
Georgia lost a petition to have his death penalty sentence be
imposed by a firing squad as opposed to lethal injection. President Donald
Trump has also signaled his support of the method.
Only one
person formally registered in support of HCR1049, while 330 registered in
opposition.
Dale
Baich, a former federal public defender in Arizona who has litigated death
penalty cases in Ohio and Arizona, urged the legislators to vote against the
resolution.
Baich, who
has taught a course on the death penalty in the Arizona State University law
program for 22 years, said that the proposals present “constitutional,
operational and public policy concerns.”
Although
Baich said he recognizes the seriousness of death penalty cases and the
profound loss of the victims’ families, Payne’s proposals would not solve the
state’s death penalty problems.
“Instead,
it will likely increase litigation, costs and national scrutiny,” he said.
“Recent evidence shows firing squad executions are not immune from serious
failures or prolonged suffering.”
Baich
pointed to Madhi’s botched execution in South Carolina. The South Carolina
Supreme Court in 2024 upheld the state’s law allowing execution by firing
squad, passed in 2021, saying that it wouldn’t count as unconstitutional cruel
and unusual punishment “unless there is a massive botch of the execution in
which each member of the firing squad simply misses the inmate’s heart.”
Courtney
Quinones-Machado, who said she was a disabled military combat veteran, a former
corrections officer and now a chaplain for those on death row, said she “deeply
opposed” Payne’s proposals. Quinones-Machado also spoke against Kolodin’s
proposal last year.
She asked
the committee members to think about what participating in an execution would
do to the correctional officers.
“I, too,
thought, when I went into the military, I could handle
it,” Quinones-Machado said. “I came home a different person.”
She said
that her whole family suffered because of her post-traumatic stress disorder
and alcoholism.
“I
understand you will say this is a voluntary position,” Quinones-Machado
said. “I understand that most people think they can handle killing somebody.
But I promise you, once you have, it is a different outlook.”
Both of
Payne’s proposals passed the committee along party lines and will next head to
the full Senate for consideration.
Sen. T.J.
Shope, R- Coolidge, who voted for both measures, described himself as a “very
strong supporter of the death penalty being an option, especially in some of
the most heinous crimes that take place in this state.”
Shope said
he hoped that Arizona could look toward Utah for guidance on how to handle any
legal issues concerning firing squad executions since that state has carried
them out “successfully for decades.”
Only Utah,
Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Mississippi allow execution by firing
squad.
Utah has
only executed three people that way since the death penalty was reinstated in
1976. Those executions happened in 1977, 1996 and 2010.
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